


we were in screaming colour

by restless5oul



Category: Formula 1 RPF, GP2 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brief Heartbreak, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Other pairings are side pairings only, oblivious idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8012920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restless5oul/pseuds/restless5oul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for max verstappen and carlos sainz, it should have been obvious. but, as they say, the course of true love never did run smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were in screaming colour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DamsInDistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamsInDistress/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Chesca! I hope you like this, and I hope you have a wonderful day :)
> 
> This is pretty different to what I usually write, but when Chesca wanted some happy VerSainz for her birthday, how could I turn that down? I hope it's sufficiently rom-com enough, haha ;)

Soulmates. For as long as people can remember, almost everyone has had one, the one person with the ability to turn your world from a dull greyscale to a glorious technicolour. But only when the two soulmates share their first kiss. It’s one of life’s great tragedies that two soulmates could walk straight past each other and never know, or even spend their whole lives in each other’s company, all the while unaware that they’re staring at the one person they’re meant to be with. Most find each other, sooner or later. Some never do.

For Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz, it should have been obvious. But, as they say, the course of true love never did run smooth.

 

***

“Just pick one Max, it doesn’t matter, they basically look the same.”

 

Carlos was leaning on the hotel room wall, his arms folded, legs crossed, as he watched his best friend alternate between holding up a grey tie and a slightly less grey tie to his shirt, frowning as he considered his options. He’d been finishing up getting ready since Carlos had arrived, which was about fifteen minutes ago now, and his anxiety had been growing steadily the entire time. He’d finally got his hair perfected, but that just left him to tackle the predicament of his tie.

 

“You pick then,” Max said, holding out the ties for Carlos to choose between. Taking them from Max, he tossed aside the darker of the ties and held up the lighter one.

 

“This one, matches your eye colour better,” Carlos joked, smiling. He didn’t actually know what colour Max’s eyes really were, all he knew was that they were lighter than his own, and therefore similar to the lighter tie. As kids they’d stood side by side looking into a mirror trying to guess what colour their eyes were, but all they could work out was that Carlos’ were darker than Max’s. They’d asked Carlos’ parents, who had told them that Max had blue eyes while Carlos’ were brown, but that meant little to the two boys. He had always thought that when he did finally meet his soulmate, and they shared their first kiss, that one of the first colours he’d like to see would be Max’s eyes.

 

“Could you tie it for me?” Max asked, pouting, not taking the tie from his best friend. He held up his hands in front of their faces to show Carlos that they were lightly trembling, “My hands are shaking and I don’t want to do it wrong, I really can’t look like a total mess tonight.”

 

Rolling his eyes in mock exasperation, Carlos obliged, wearing an endeared smile. Their High School prom night had been built up to be a rather big deal in Max’s head, though Carlos himself was just looking forward to a fun night with his friends. But as their last occasion surrounded by each other before they all headed their separate ways, to university and other pastures new, Max had decided it was his last chance to make his move with Pierre.

 

While Carlos, and most more laidback soulmate-less people, would have quite liked the chance to see his world in something other than black and white for once. Max was borderline obsessed with finding his soulmate. And for the past year he’d been convinced that their French classmate and close friend Pierre had to be the one. He could have been right, for all Carlos knew, because he was certainly crushing hard on him. And while Carlos would have easily admitted that Pierre had that appealing, cosmopolitan air about him, he wasn’t sure how well him and Max suited each other. But then again, he didn’t know many pairs of soulmates, and he supposed it couldn’t be the same for all people.

 

Carlos had once suggested that if Max was so desperate to find his soulmate then he should just kiss all of their friends to find out. But that seemed to exist in direct violation to all those romantic notions Max had surrounding soulmates, and that he wanted the moment he finally saw in colour to be special and wonderful, not done on a whim or because he was wasted. So now that left him with very little time, as he had convinced himself that this one night had to be the night he made his move and found out whether what he hoped was true. Carlos neglected to mention the fact that it wasn’t exactly like it would be the last time he’d ever see Pierre, provided that their group stayed in touch, but Max seemed to like the added drama that thought gave.

 

“Ok, how do I look?” Max asked, turning away from the mirror and looking at Carlos sheepishly.

 

“Beautiful,” Carlos winked, throwing an arm around his best friend’s shoulders, and trying to finally get him to leave the safety of his bedroom and actually make it to the hotel before prom finished.

 

“Are you sure?” Max asked again, trying to get another look at himself in the mirror, but Carlos pulled him away.

 

“Yes, I promise,” he said more sincerely this time, giving Max a serious look to show he meant it, “Now come on, I promised I’d give Alex a lift and we’re making him wait as it is.”

 

Satisfied to at least some degree, Max let himself by shepherded out the room, and the two of them tried to squeeze their way down the narrow staircase side by side, arms still round each other, thundering down the steps, an attempt that very nearly left them in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Luckily Carlos’ mum reprimanded them before they could injure themselves. This was followed by much fussing over the two of them and the insistence that they had to get their photo taken;

 

“If not for me, then at least for Max’s mum. I know she’d hate it if she didn’t even get to see what you looked like all dressed up like this,” and that got the two of them to relent. The photo she took would later sit on the mantelpiece behind them, next to the one of the two of them at Max’s eighth birthday party, and the one that was taken on their first day of high school.

 

Only twenty minutes late, they arrived at Alex’s house to find him waiting at the end of his drive, tapping his watch, a pair of ostentatious sunglasses sat on his face.

 

“Are the shades really necessary?” Carlos asked trying hard not to laugh, watching Alex slide into the backseat from his rear-view mirror.

 

“Absolutely. I work hard to uphold my air of mystery. It’s what makes me so god damn irresistible,” he shrugged off the slight, pulling out a hip flask from his jacket pocket, which they passed around between them, trying not to grimace too much as the strong liquor hit the back of their throats.

 

“I’m not sure how much mystery you have left after you’ve banged nearly everyone at school,” Max muttered as Alex strapped himself in, earning a snort from Carlos.

 

“Excuse you!” Alex huffed, looking affronted, and snatching his hip flask back from the Dutchman. Max just laughed, looking over at his best friend, making him laugh more when he saw how hard he was trying not to join in. Statistically speaking, Carlos was surprised that Alex hadn’t found his soulmate yet, simply because he’d had the most opportunity too, but then he supposed not everyone was blessed with true love at the tender age of eighteen.

 

They were the last of their group to arrive, and Carlos tried not to smile when he saw Max’s eyes immediately drawn to Pierre, who was laughing at something Mitch had said. He had tried to hide his personal reservations about whether everything would work out the way Max wanted, but as he felt a pang of worry for his best friend’s feelings he couldn’t help but say;

 

“Hey Max,” attracting his attention, hanging back a little while Alex went on ahead to sit at their table.

 

“Mmm?” his mind was clearly preoccupied, and he hadn’t even looked at Carlos, so he placed a hand on his forearm to get his attention. That worked, and Max finally let his eyes rest on Carlos’, only just visible in the low lighting.

 

“Be careful, I don’t want you to end up heartbroken,” he warned with a sad kind of smile.

 

“Oh Carlitos, I’ll be just fine,” Max replied, looking touched at the gesture, but not as worried as he had been just half an hour ago.

 

As they approached the table, Sean stood to greet them, ruffling their hair in that affectionate, brotherly way, before sitting them down on either side of him.

 

“Max, are you aware that your socks don’t match?” was the first thing he said once they were seated, pointing at Max’s feet. With an expression of sheer panic, Max glanced down, but with no hope of distinguishing the colours with his grayscale vision. That panic was erased in a moment, when Sean burst out laughing, followed by the rest of their party, much to Max’s annoyance. He retaliated with a punch to Sean’s arm, but joined in the laughter eventually.

 

Sean, and his boyfriend Antonio, who had now taken his seat in his lap, were one of the lucky few who had found out they were soulmates before either of them had reached sixteen. Sickeningly, but happily in love, it was one of their favourite couple’s activities to wind their friends up, using their full colour vision to their advantage.

As the laughter died down, Carlos looked around at his friends, thinking about how happy he was to just be with them in that moment. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know the colour of their eyes or the shade of their hair, in fact he couldn’t care less. He spared one last glance towards his lovesick best friend before deciding that at least for the night, he wasn’t going to worry about anyone’s problems but his.

 

***

In the end, it turned out that prom finished before Max could work up the nerve to talk to Pierre alone, which he told Carlos on the phone the next day. He’d never seemed too cut up about it, even when the news came that Pierre had gotten an internship at a newspaper back in Paris, while Max was staying in England to go to university. But on the night before he left, he confessed to Carlos that he was yet to give up hope.

 

“I figure, if I meet my soulmate at university, then that’s great! But even if I don’t, it’s not as though I won’t see everyone again, so it doesn’t matter. Because I’ll see him again.”

 

Carlos could only play the supportive best friend. Though it seemed obvious to him that Pierre only held platonic feelings towards Max, he could hardly say so. He prayed Max would meet someone nice, and infinitely more attractive than their friend while he studied and find his soulmate in them so he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of rejection. But maybe that was a little pessimistic of him.

 

Carlos’ three years at university passed without ever finding his soulmate. He dated guys and girls, and even after the initial disappointment after that first kiss, he could still be happy with them. It didn’t matter that they weren’t each other’s great love, because they could still have fun, their relationship could still be comfortable. Sometimes he wondered whether it would be such a bad thing to settle for fun or comfortable. He knew some adults far older than him who still hadn’t found their soulmate, Max’s mother and father had not been soulmates, yet they’d still managed to make it work for some time, though their marriage broke down in the end. But not everyone was as content with settling as he was, and in the end, he always heard the words;

 

“Maybe being friends would be better.”

 

That was how he met Dany. They’d dated in their first year, but it hadn’t worked out. It also turned out that he knew Artem, who’d they’d all been friends with back in high school, so there was that common ground too. Carlos was yet to work out why all Russian people he had met in his short life seemed to know one another. They got along well, they didn’t have the lifelong closeness he had with Max, who he saw every time they came home for the holidays, but Carlos liked him. Even if he shared Max’s tendency to over romanticise the notion of soulmates.

 

“You know; I think that you don’t need to kiss them to know. I think you can feel it when you first look at them, just by seeing them. I mean, the idea of love at first sight has to come from somewhere, right?” he’d philosophised one evening they’d spent getting high in Carlos’ room, having to periodically waft a towel by the smoke detector to stop the alarm going off. Carlos could only roll his eyes in response.

 

They got along so well that Carlos even invited him back home with him the summer after they all graduated from university. Everyone was coming home, even Pierre was staying for a few weeks, and Mitch was flying back from America where he studied. Carlos hadn’t seen any of them as often as he’d seen Max over the years, so he could only hope they could pull off the ‘wow this is just like old times’ act well enough so as not to feel awkward.

 

Max’s search for his soulmate had gone about as successfully as Carlos’ half assed one had. So even all those years later, he still held onto the idea that Pierre could be his. Time hadn’t diminished his schoolboy crush, and it seemed it was true what they said about distance making the heart grow fonder.

 

They’d picked Carlos’ house to meet at, which meant naturally Max was already there by the time people started arriving. Dany should have been lurking about somewhere, but he’d taken a keen interest in the young Finnish man who worked at the local coffee shop and had insisted that he needed to pick up some pastries, or something to that effect. So he still wasn’t back by the time Sean and Tonio arrived, barrelling into the living room that was already looking too small with only four of them in there.

 

The two of them were halfway through retelling a story about a trip the two of them had recently taken to Indonesia when Mitch and Artem appeared, with Dany in tow, who they’d picked up on his way back from the coffee shop. He looked even more love-struck than he had before he’d left.

 

“Love at first sight?” Carlos asked him, grinning.

 

“Well I have his number,” he replied, shrugging coyly.

 

Vaguely Carlos could tell that Max was getting impatient about Pierre’s arrival, though he was trying hard to hide it. He wasn’t the same puppy dog eyed teenager he’d once been, but there were definite hints of that old infatuation in his demeanour. But he wasn’t the last to arrive, Alex was still missing too, which meant he probably hadn’t forgotten all together. Not that Carlos thought he would. He just knew the anxiety in Max’s mind might be making him think that.

 

As if on cue, there was the sound of the front door opening.

 

“We’re in here!” Carlos called out, knowing Pierre or Alex would follow the sound of his voice to the living room.

 

As it turned out, both of them had arrived, and Carlos was going to assume that the two of them had simply driven over together, until he saw that their hands were entwined, and they were looking embarrassed and pink in the face. He wasn’t the only one to notice.

 

“Wait! Wait!” Sean shouted excitedly, jumping to his feet, “What colour are my eyes?”

 

Pierre and Alex exchanged a look quickly, seemingly unsure of what to say.

 

“Brown,” Pierre finally said and was promptly jumped on by his lanky friend. Mitch joined the impromptu group hug by leaping on Pierre’s back, ruffling his hair excitedly, saying things like ‘they grow up so fast!’.

 

“Holy shit,” Antonio laughed, covering his mouth with his hands, “How long have you known?”

 

“Almost a year,” Alex said as Pierre blushed, once he’d managed to extract himself from the enthusiastic embrace.

 

“A year?!” Mitch looked positively scandalised at being left in the dark for so long. Which was similar to how Carlos felt at that moment. And though he was incredibly happy for the two of them, he couldn’t bear to look at Max because he knew what expression he would find on his face.

 

“I know, I know,” Pierre apologised.

 

“We just met up when I went to Paris last year, and we were drunk and well, you know how it goes. We didn’t really know what to think either. We wanted to wait until we knew how to tell you guys, that’s all,” Alex explained glancing at Pierre with such a look of adoration that Carlos felt his own heart give way a little.

 

“Wow, congrats guys,” he finally said, with a small laugh of disbelief, walking up to shake their hands, which kind of felt like the right thing to do. Everyone else seemed to follow his lead, except for Max, who hung back. Stepping away from the crush of hugs and congratulations, Carlos looked at him just in time to see him step from the living room and escape into the kitchen. He couldn’t help but follow.

 

“Max I’m so sorry,” he said in a hushed voice, cautious that they didn’t want to be overheard, or their absence noticed.

 

“No, no, it’s okay,” Max sounded a little choked, and from the distraught expression on his face it was clear that he was close to tears, “It doesn’t matter.”

 

He picked his jacket up from the back of one of the dining chairs, and Carlos realised that he meant to leave, and moved to stop him.

 

“No wait, you can’t leave,” he said, trying to place a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

 

“I can’t stay here Carlos, I just can’t. I just don’t think I can be in there right now, not when-…” he shook his head sadly unable to finish his sentence, as a single tear escaped his eye and he hurried to wipe it away, “I’ll be okay.”

 

Carlos was about to say something else, but Max was out of the kitchen door, and looking through the window he could see him break into a jog as he headed down the driveway as fast as he could. Feeling the shared sadness that came with having a best friend, he wondered how he himself could re-enter the living room and face the rest of their friends knowing that he should be with Max right now. But he had to anyway. And he knew his excuse about Max feeling ill wasn’t fooling anyone, but he didn’t want to spoil Pierre and Alex’s happiness, so he tried not to dwell on it or mention it again.

 

He couldn’t wait longer than the next day before he had to call Max to check up on him, and he didn’t sound as though he was doing too great on the phone, but he agreed to come over, which was something. When he arrived he looked tired, but not overly upset, which Carlos took as a good sign.

 

“I’m really sorry Max,” he said when he opened the door to let his best friend in, engulfing him in a bone crushingly tight hug, hoping that Max found it at least somewhat comforting. But it was hard to tell.

 

“You don’t have to apologise,” he said when they broke apart, “It was stupid anyway.”

 

He spoke at they walked through the living room, towards the patio doors where Carlos had been sat outside on the steps that led out to his back garden. Max paused for a fraction of a second by the fireplace, running his hand along the picture of the two of them taken on prom night, back when they looked so much younger than eighteen.

 

“It wasn’t stupid.”

 

“No it was.”

 

And they moved on, and eventually took their place on the cool concrete steps, their knees knocking together, staring out at the early morning mist that had settled on the hills on the horizon.

 

“I don’t think I ever seriously thought he could be my soulmate, not really. I think it just would have been nice if it was him,” Max finally said after a lengthy pause, “It’s Pierre isn’t it? Everyone likes him, Alex is lucky.”

 

The last part of his sentence was said without a hint of bitterness, and Carlos knew he was happy for them, underneath all of his disappointment.

 

“Yeah,” Carlos murmured in agreement, not really sure what to say, and preferring to let Max explain how he was feeling.

 

“It was just the shock more than anything I think. I’d spent the whole day psyching myself up to at least tell Pierre how I felt, if he hadn’t found someone already, and then he shows up and he has found someone. And its Alex of all people,” he laughed lightly, because it really was all a bit absurd. Alex was so full of arrogant confidence, that he shouldn’t have matched Pierre’s quieter, self assured sweetness, but when Carlos thinks about it for longer, they really do compliment each other perfectly. They balance each other out. And maybe that’s what soulmates are supposed to be about; harmony.

 

“I kissed Alex once you know, and I did wonder for a moment, that if when I opened my eyes, it would be him. But I think everyone felt that way about Alex,” Carlos admitted, and he didn’t expect his confession to be met with genuine, loud laughter from Max.

 

“No you didn’t!” he said through his laughter, seemingly disbelieving.

 

“I did, why is that so hard to believe?” he asked, raising his eyebrow, not sure what was so funny about it.

 

“No, no it’s not. It’s just I did the exact same thing, at prom actually,” Max finally stopped laughing, but his words elicited incredulous laugher from Carlos now.

 

“At prom?”

 

“Yeah, why?”

 

“That was the same night I kissed him.”

 

Their joint amusement had lifted the mood from the sombre one that had settled over them when Carlos had first answered the door, because it was just _so_ Alex, and they had to laugh because otherwise it was quite pathetic really. By the time they calmed down their sides were aching, and Max had to pick his head up off Carlos’ shoulder, still giggling to himself.

 

“Pierre must have been the only person he knew who he didn’t kiss in high school,” Max rolled his eyes.

 

“Pretty much.”

 

A comfortable silence settled over the two of them, as they turned to watch the sunlight, which streamed from behind them, slowly lighten the hillside, the early morning chill still swirling in the air.

 

“I wish I knew how colours change when the sun shines on them,” Max said wistfully.

 

“Yeah me too.”

 

Another pause.

 

“You know…” Max started, but then stopped, biting his lip to stop himself from saying anything further.

 

“What?” he had Carlos’ attention know, who had turned to him, and couldn’t decipher the small grin Max wore.

 

“Well…we never kissed did we?” he eventually said, tilting his head and shooting Carlos his best innocent look.

 

“What?” Carlos barked a laugh, because the idea that kissing Max would let him know who his soulmate was seemed so bizarre to him. Max looked a little offended at that.

 

“Well why not?” he challenged, raising an eyebrow. And he had a point there, “You never know till you try.”

 

Carlos considered what he was obviously suggesting for a moment. It wasn’t that the idea of kissing Max repulsed him, it didn’t in the slightest, he was closer to him than anyone in the entire world after all. Why couldn’t he be his soulmate? That one thought sent a jolt of anxiety to his core, what if he was? What if all their immutable closeness really meant something deeper than friendship? What if the reason for their synchronicity was not platonic but romantic? He looked at Max, who was watching him closely, and a little nervously too, and suddenly it felt a little hard to breathe. The energy between them shifted, and the air became loaded with heavy tension that crackled and sparked.

 

“Okay then,” he said, trying to sound like it was a casual notion to him, but his voice came out breathless.

 

He watched Max close his eyes and begin to close the distance between them, and could do nothing but copy him. Carlos tried hard to ignore how hard his heart was beating, or the way it jumped when Max’s lips found their way to his. It was just a peck, feather light and feather soft, and it didn’t last very long. But Carlos kept his eyes closed for a moment longer after they broke apart, before he could work up the courage to open them.

 

When he did he was met by a pair of dazzling blue eyes staring back at him, as wide and shocked as his own must have been.

 

“Oh my god,” he whispered, unable to look away from this bright shade that was revealing itself to him at last, mesmerised.

 

He was so surprised, but to his delight, he found that he was also overjoyed. His heart felt like it was about to explode, and there was that familiar tug of happiness in the pit of his stomach. He glanced around the garden and was moved to his feet when he was hit by the sight of his world in full colour rather than only black, white and shades of grey. He could see the green of the grass, and how it shined a different shade where it was bathed in sunlight. He looked up to see that the sky was blue rather than grey. And when he looked back at Max he realised it was almost a perfect match for his eye colour. A wide smile of both disbelief and joy broke out across his face, and he covered his mouth with his hands as a laugh slipped from his lips.

 

“You see it too?” he asked him excitedly, keeping his voice quiet as though raising it would shatter the illusion, tugging at his hand to pull him to his feet. With his new found multi-coloured sight he could see that Max was blushing prettily, his cheeks flushed with a light shade of pink. The sudden assault of colour on his senses heightened them, so he felt like he could feel Max’s pulse in his palm and hear how rapid his breathing was.

 

“Yeah I-,” he started but he seemed lost for words, “I can’t believe this. This is ridiculous.”

 

“Ridiculous?”

 

“I’ve known you since we were eight years old and it took us thirteen years to kiss! We’re so stupid!”

 

And Carlos laughed at that, but it didn’t really matter. Sure it may have saved Max the heartbreak and him some time, but they’d always had each other.

 

“Well you can kiss me now.”

 

Driven by an insatiable ecstasy he surged towards Max again, though this time he curled one hand around the back of his neck and tugged at his hand again so he could pull him closer, their second kiss deeper and harder than the first. Kissing Max tasted like euphoria, like a fireworks display beneath his skin, like there was no time in all the world in which he would tire of doing so. The need with which Max kissed him back told him it was exactly the same for him.

 

When they needed to breathe they broke apart, and Carlos again couldn’t stop the laugh that slipped forth from his mouth. Because it was so perfect. That his best friend was his soulmate. And holy shit, he should have realised that sooner.  


End file.
